ATV/OHV Meeting

[Grumpy]

http://www.keprtv.com/news/local/Sen-De ... 73593.html



Senator Delvin upper right, Jim Putman lower right.

[SPR]

Dave, Good job on attending the meeting -- that's is a long haul for you.

One of several concerns that I have about expanding quad access is the potential for reduced car/4x4 access to public roads. For example, some officials in Columbia County (Dayton) are pro quad and wish to allow them on county roads. The potential for bad interactions between quads and cars is a concern. Therefore, the county commissioners recently choose to close Eckler Mt Road (the road from Dayton to the Monument) to cars until May 1. Only sleds and quads are allowed on the road. This is a rough deal for many of folks without a quad that wish to hunt that area in the Spring for turkeys, bears, horns or mushrooms.

The Forest Service recently closed Skyline Loop (connects to Eckler Mt road) to cars/4x4 until May 1. Ironically, the Forest Service does not currently allow quads on their roads. Now that cars/4x4 are not allowed on the county road connecting to the Forest Service road, there is no pressure for the Forest Service open their roads early to us. In addition, one of the excusses that the Forest Sevice used to restrict quad access to Sky Line Loop is a mute point (simulatinous use issuse for cars, quads/sleds) issue. I would not be surprised to see quad acess to Sky Line Loop in the near furture. As I see it, the Forest Service screwed us out April snow runs and the County’s quad access to Eckler Mt Road eliminated any chance of that we will ever legally run Sky Line Loop on April.

Idaho is a big quad use State. A ton of their remote public roads are open only to quads/bikes/sleds unitl June 15. If Delvin's plans work out, odds are that we will see additional county roads closed to us and opened to quads during the early Spring.

Thanks again Dave for attending the meeting and keeping Delvin and others aware of the 4x4 comminuty's concerns.

[White trash]

Sweet pokey is involved so anyone with a rig on 33's and a sub 100" wheelbase is good.

[Grumpy]

Uh, that there ain't quite how it was. Neither Tod Peterson nor I were able to make it due to work schedules! Someone didn't check the attendance list against the invite list. Wish to hell I could have made it, but I will have a better idea on what happened shortly...I hope.

Trash, don't throw stuff at me, but I invited Jim.

[Grumpy]

We talked about was making it legal for quads to ride on
certain roads to be able to get from trailheads to camping areas or small
towns and such. Right now this bill is only about vehicles 51" wide and with
handle bars. My main points during this meeting were expanding the bill to
include the Buggy/Truggy type rigs so they could be able to do the same
thing legally. We also talked about places where bridges would need to be
built to cross water ways and the idea came up that NOVA funds could be used for this. I said we (4x4s) would be glad to endorse such things as long as the bridges were build at 96" and were open to all to use.

Jim Putman

[Grumpy]

Okay, Ry, as I said, I asked Jim to sit in on this as I wasn't able to make it, and I wanted representation for the full size 4x4 crowd. Sounds to me like he got some licks in on behalf of the guys with tube thingies! I think in the past some of us given Jim short shrift on a few things. 96" on bridge width seems about right to cover all of us. I guess we'll know shortly how some of this pending legislation turns out. If any of you have ideas, get them to the Senator! I'm still a mite miffed over this 5979 thing, too. Comment has been put forth that maybe DNR deliberately went soft. Dunno, but one of our group who is up to his b***s in all this stated that he heard one DNR "manager" state it is easier to manage public land without the public! That annoys me, and I wish I knew who that cull is!!